1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to the filtering of digital video signals and has particular application to the filtering of noise from video signals.
Digital video signals often include noise. The noise can either be intrinsic to the process by means of which the signal has been generated or it may have been introduced by later processing of the signal during storage or transmission of the signal.
2. Description of the Related Art
Noisy video signals are difficult to compress and it is a common step to filter out the noise prior to compression. At the data rates used for video signals it is important that the filter used is computationally simple and efficient. It is also important the filter should be able to adapt to changes in the underlying scene statistics.
The recursive filters that have been employed in the past to filter digital video signals often produce visible artifacts and are generally of relatively low performance. It is the aim of the present invention to provide filtering of digital video signals in a manner that is computationally simple and efficient.